Brand China's face that should have been- Yang Peiyi, what a beauty!

This undated video frame grab image originally aired by China Central Television and taken from the Chinese website Sina.com, shows 7 year-old Yang Peiyi, the girl who actually sang during the opening ceremony of the Beijing 2008 Olympics. Lin Miaoke lip-synched the song "Ode to the Motherland" in a performance during the opening ceremony, while Yang Peiyi's voice was actually heard. (AP Photo/CCTV).

-----------

Chinese defend Olympic ceremony lip-synch
By ROHAN SULLIVAN

BEIJING (AP) — Chinese officials defended their decision to pass off the voice of a 7-year-old songbird as that of another girl at the Olympic opening ceremony, calling it a simple casting choice. Critics said it was a step too far in China's obsession with the perfect Olympic Games.
Beijing organizers of the games faced tough criticism Wednesday after a whistleblower revealed that the 9-year-old who performed a song during the spectacular opening ceremony was lip-synching to another girl's vocal track.

Yang Peiyi, a 7-year-old with bright eyes and a smile made crooked by the stubs of her first grown-up teeth, was heard by an audience estimated in the billions during Friday night's ceremony, singing "Ode to the Motherland."

But they never saw her face.

Organizers passed the song off as being sung by Lin Miaoke, another perky schoolgirl who donned a sparkly red dress and soared on wires above the 91,000-strong crowd at the Bird's Nest stadium.

----

"The counterfeit Games: designed to look good from every angle," said a headline in The Times of London. The Daily Telegraph urged organizers of the 2012 London Games to "bring some sanity and proportion back to both the opening ceremony and the games themselves."

In Spain, one newspaper called it "Olympic karaoke." A commentator for The Age newspaper in
Australia called it "the great Beijing lip-synch switcheroo" and news on the incident was headlined "China's wrong child policy." The Romanian daily 7Plus ran this on its front page: "Hoax! Made in China."

Baltimore Sun reporter Jill Rosen said the switch was hardly the first case of lip-synching, but was "possibly the cruelest."

New York Magazine called on record executives to give Peiyi a record deal, saying "She's 7! She has buckteeth! She is adorable!"

The Chinese leadership consider the Beijing Olympics a matter of national prestige and the opening extravaganza, attended by a host of leaders including President Bush, was intended to wow the world.

----

"This is pretty unfair for the girl who was not picked to perform live," said Cui Fengsi, a Beijing driver-for-hire in comments typical of several people who spoke to The Associated Press on Wednesday, and of numerous blog posts. "This girl has a great voice and they should recognize that she deserves to be seen. She should definitely perform at the closing ceremonies."

article parsed, read in full here : http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gRqqWAq6hXaag3Is87o6xMzH40CwD92HIGK00